GAME BYTES: Moral ambiguity welcome in games

Friday

May 17, 2013 at 12:01 AM

In the last few weeks I've been playing "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords" for what feels like the first time (I can't seem to remember much of it, at least so far), and what is most striking about this game is the moral ambiguity.

By Phil OwenSpecial to Tusk

In the last few weeks I've been playing "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords" for what feels like the first time (I can't seem to remember much of it, at least so far), and what is most striking about this game is the moral ambiguity.Moral ambiguity, in general, is not something we find too often in Western RPGs. Yes, many of them allow you to be bad, but they always declare your actions bad when you do. They don't spend time debating the actual morality of your actions. You either do good or evil, and that's that.But in "KOTOR II," you spend a lot of time with people who fought for the "bad guys" in the war from the previous game, and the game paints those folks as ordinary people, and not horrible, sinister beings out to murder everyone. Too, you're followed around by a Jedi named Kreia who exists to cast moral doubt on all your actions. Do good by, say, tossing a hobo five credits, and Kreia will compare that person to a butterfly coming out of its cocoon, saying his struggle will give him strength in the long run, and aiding him will weaken him. And then when you do something mean, like using the Force to convince a pair of thugs to jump off a building, she calls you a psychopath. It's all so very fascinating.These are layers that are completely absent from BioWare's original game and, indeed, from any of their other output save, perhaps, "Dragon Age." But that's a game that mostly just doesn't judge you at all. Obsidian (developers of "KOTOR II"), on the other hand, bathes in this kind of thing. You can see it above all in "Fallout: New Vegas," a game in which behaving yourself throughout the entire experience still leads to choices that all seem, at best, morally gray. There is a place, of course for games that view a situation in black and white terms, but those titles tend to dominate the market. Obsidian's brand of games that make you seriously consider your choices is rare. Normally, you just either choose to be a jerk or a nice guy, but man that gets boring.What we get out of "KOTOR II," on the other hand, is true intellectual stimulation, which includes ideas that you can apply to real life and not just the virtual scenario you are experiencing. It encourages you to look at the real world through a new lens, which is what the best art does. We like putting moral labels on things, but "KOTOR II" shows us that rarely do those labels fit perfectly. That, above all, is what I want to get out of a choice-based role-playing game. I want to have to think about things. I want to wonder if the decision I made is the right one. I want my viewpoint to be challenged. Games too often are afraid to do that, but games with choices are the perfect place to insert some legitimate social commentary. And that's why, as I see it, ­"KOTOR II," despite all its well-documented technical flaws, is one of the most profound gaming experiences I've played. Let's hope that as we enter a new generation of games we'll see more of that.

Phil Owen is a freelance video game critic and columnist.

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